Album Review: Barbra Streisand EVERGREENS: CELEBRATING SIX DECADES ON COLUMBIA RECORDS A Beautiful, If Off-Balanced, Collection Of Ballads

‘Tis the season for Barbra Streisand, isn’t it?  With the recent release of two CDs, her much-anticipated memoir, and more interviews that you can shake a white microphone at, the star everyone is focused on this holiday season is not the one shining in the East - it is The Greatest Star and there is plenty of her to go around.

To celebrate 60 years with Columbia Records, Barbra Streisand has released a compilation album titled EVERGREENS: CELEBRATING SIX DECADES ON COLUMBIA RECORDS.  Manufactured and released by Legacy Recordings, Evergreens is 1 hour and 18 minutes of music,  22 songs, 21 of which have been pulled from her albums over the years, 1 of which is a new remix of the title cut “Evergreen” (written by Streisand and Paul Williams, who won an Oscar for the Love Theme to A Star Is Born).   The collection is available as a CD, on vinyl, and on all digital platforms, and I would like, by way of offering my opinion, to suggest that everyone just stream the album.  The CD is $18., the album is $35., and you can get the MP3 on Amazon for $13. But why spend the money when every single song is something from an album we all already have?  A person could look at the song list for EVERGREENS and make themselves a playlist on Spotify or YouTube, using those very songs.  Yes, there is one previously unreleased track from the HIGHER GROUND album (1997) and the remix of “Evergreen” that, as is the case with most remixes, is new instrumental tracks laid in with the original vocals, but it is possible to find those cuts online and either buy them as singles or just add them to your playlist.  What is the cosmic purpose of spending eighteen dollars on this CD or thirty-five on an album, when everything on the recording is available, either in our personal collections or online?  Sadly, nothing.

The packaging for the single disc CD is a simple cardboard digipak with some liner notes by Executive Producer Jay Landers and, of course, Barbra Streisand sounds amazing on all the tracks, which is a given, especially if you’re a fan who already has all the albums - and chances are that the people buying this album are going to be fans because those are the people who buy compilation discs.  If someone wanted to buy this as a Barbra Streisand starter kit, that would be fine, except that, as starter kits go, one of her earlier compilations would be a better fit because a starter kit really requires the hits.  This collection is not the hits.  It isn't the misses, either - the collection is something somewhere in between.  And before we leave the paragraph in which packaging is discussed:  I miss the days when Barbra Streisand had the best, the most evocative, the most provocative album covers.  This album (like some others in the last decade or so) looks like a haphazard snapshot made with an Instamatic or an iPhone.

The publicity for the project proudly boasts that none of these songs have ever appeared on previous compilations.  Now, that is interesting.   The collection is also interesting, with wonderful songs that may have been overlooked over the years like “Letters That Cross In The Mail” from 1975’s LAZY AFTERNOON and “The Shadow Of Your Smile” from the 1965 release MY NAME IS BARBRA, TWO or the sublimely perfect Streisand version of “Tomorrow” from 1978 and the SONGBIRD album.  These are great cuts, for the most part (I'm not a big fan of WALLS), even though EVERGREENS is an album made up of ballads, which doesn’t make for a full representation of the last sixty years at Columbia.  Barbra Streisand sang more than ballads - she did comedy numbers, torch songs, disco, and big, dramatic musical monologues.  It would have been nice to enjoy a chronological smorgasbord of the last sixty years, with a little “I Don’t Care Much” (THE SECOND Barbra Streisand ALBUM, 1963) or some “Stout-Hearted Men” (SIMPLY STREISAND, 1967).  “Life On Mars” from BUTTERFLY, 1974, would have been an interesting way to note the attempts to go Seventies pop/rock, and GUILTY, one of Streisand’s most compelling albums could have yielded a representation of her Eighties work.  But it seems like Barbra Streisand, when it came time to pick the songs for the collection, was in a ballad mood, introspective and emotional, lush and pretty.  And that’s fine because this is, after all, her album, it is her collection, and she should curate it the way she wants it.  At least with “Two People” she gives a little love to TILL I LOVED YOU, a 1988 album that deserves more praise than it gets, and by choosing “Who Can I Turn To?” from the 2016 release ENCORE: MOVIE PARTNERS SING BROADWAY, she gets to give a nod to Anthony Newley, who plays a prominent role in her memoir.  But I would have hoped that Barbra Streisand might choose Ann Hampton Callaway’s “I’ve Dreamed Of You” from A LOVE LIKE OURS (1999) since it was (reportedly) written for her wedding, and it would have been nice for 2003’s THE MOVIE ALBUM to represent her friend, the late Stephen Sondheim, with the pretty and plaintive recording of “Goodbye For Now.” 

As I said before, this is Barbra Streisands’ album and her curation of certain songs she feels represent her sixty years at Columbia.  I just, personally, found the collection of beautiful ballads to be a little unbalanced in that representation, no matter how gorgeous she sounds on every single cut (which she does).  It isn’t always about just sounding good, though, and when we are looking at a compilation, when we are looking at spending nearly twenty dollars on a single disc full of music we already own, the purpose of the disc should be to take us on a journey when played from start to finish.  Barbra Streisand’S GREATEST HITS and Barbra Streisand’S GREATEST HITS VOLUME II both did that, as did JUST FOR THE RECORD, and I was just hoping that EVERGREENS would do the same thing which, for me (sadly), it did not.

Barbra Streisand EVERGREENS: CELEBRATING SIX DECADES ON COLUMBIA RECORDS is a 2023 release on the label Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment.  It is available anywhere music can be found, on digital download, on streaming platforms, and as physical single CDS or 2-disc vinyl.

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